West Bengal

Bellandur lake catches fire again
A huge fire broke out in the highly polluted Bellandur lake last week, causing worry to Bengaluru residents. A strong contingent of 5,000 army jawans doused the fire in the lake. Soon after the incident, the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board blamed the defenc...

Pitidri is a nondescript village that dots the rainshadow area of Purulia district in West Bengal. Droughts are common here even when the area is endowed with above average rainfall of over 1300 mm a year. Until some time ago, Urmila Mahato, a 42-year-old farmer from Pitidri had been struggling to e...

Green nod to Inland waterway terminal at Haldia
Coastal Regulatory Zone (CRZ) clearance has been granted to the proposed inland waterways terminal at Haldia, West Bengal. The clearance, however, is subject to specific conditions regarding protection of Gangetic dolphins and marine biodiversity. The...

States freeze payments to MGNREGA workers
As per the official data, 19 states have frozen payments under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). The NREGA Sangharsh Morcha, a network of grassroots organisations, has informed that over 92 million active workers may not ...

Bihar floods: Fear of epidemic looms large
The recent flood in the state have taken 200 lives and affected nearly 1.5 crore people across 18 Bihar districts. Although the flood water has started receding, the fear of an epidemic has increased. To tackle the situation, medical facilities are being p...

After becoming a human entity, Ganga river receives first legal notice
The Uttarakhand high court has issued the first legal notice to the Ganga river, which was accorded human status recently. The court has sought a response from the river for allowing construction of a trenching ground in its lan...

The mangrove forests of the Sundarbans are the biggest barriers against cyclones from the Bay of Bengal, saving both India and Bangladesh from irreparable damage. A UNESCO world heritage site consisting of Ramsar bird conservation area and three wildlife sanctuaries, the Sundarbans will soon see a 1...

Can forest conservation policies that ignore the livelihood needs of local, indigenous populations succeed in protecting biodiversity and wildlife?
Experiences from the Sundarbans show that such policies not only result in the suffering of the local population, it also leads to the exploitation of ...

Committee rules out any change in Krishna water sharing ratio
In a major relief to the Telangana government, the AK Bajaj Committee has dismissed any changes in the water sharing ratio of the Krishna river from what was decided by the Bachawat Tribunal in 1973. The union water resources ministry in...

India should inform us about its future hydel projects: Pakistan
Pakistan has asked the World Bank and India to inform them about the dams and hydropower projects to be built on the western rivers. The statement has come following the news that India plans to start constructing Bursar dam on Chenab...

All 14 districts in Kerala have been declared drought-hitAfter witnessing a 34 percent deficit in rainfall during the south-west monsoon, the Kerala government has declared all its 14 districts drought-hit. The districts are facing severe water scarcity; the worst affected ones are Wayanad, Thrissur...

Jail term for selling packaged water above MRP: Government
Consumer affairs minister, Ram Vilas Paswan has ordered to impose a penalty and jail term on those who sell bottled water above the maximum retail price (MRP). The order is in line with the section 36 of Legal Metrology Act, that clearly or...

In August 2016, the Karnataka government gave Abu Dhabi-based businessman B.R. Shetty permission to privatise the iconic Jog Falls to make it a perennial waterfall and to develop it into a tourism hotspot. As per the newspaper report, Shetty is to invest Rs 450 crore towards the project and charge v...

For villagers at Madhusudan Kathi, the handpumps serving water from an unprotected source led to arsenic contamination, making water from these pumps risky to drink. The village in Gaighata block in North 24 Parganas, West Bengal got slowly enveloped in arsenic contamination with its groundwater rec...

Government starts river transport project with eight waterways
Shipping ministry identifies 37 inland waterways, that include rivers in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Goa, Assam and West Bengal, for the development and transport of cargo and passengers. The work on eight of these waterways ha...

Minket Lepcha always felt close to nature and the environment since her childhood, thanks to her upbringing in the picturesque Darjeeling. Though she had spent many years in Delhi, studying and working in corporate firms, her interest in community development, environment and culture brought her bac...

The Tenth Annual Global Water Alliance Conference, with the theme“Role of Locals in Implementing Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Sustainable Development Goals, 2015-2030” is to be held in Kolkata, India from January 4-7, 2017 (Site visits January 5-6).The focus of the conference will be on ...

The chief minister of Bihar, Nitish Kumar, called for the decommissioning of the Farakka barrage recently. This demand, unlike what may be expected, was not motivated by a love for free-flowing rivers. On the contrary, Kumar believes that with its upstream neighbour Uttar Pradesh usurping all the wa...

The pitiful state of some of the water bodies in the country, coupled with the sheer apathy of the government, have forced some well-meaning citizens to come out of their comfort zones and make a difference. Some of these efforts, like the Puttenahalli lake in Bengaluru that is now overflowing with ...

Come monsoon, the villages in the Sundarbans islands witness nature’s fury with floodwaters overriding all boundaries and inundating huge tracts of land. As such, the earthen embankments, stretching to 3600 kms on the 54 inhabited islands out of a total of 102 in the Sundarbans, protect scores of ...

Sustainable agro-ecological farming is one way to overcome the limitations of conventional farming. Green College shows us how to do it.

Pitidri is a nondescript village that dots the rainshadow area of Purulia district in West Bengal. Droughts are common here even when the area is endowed with above average rainfall of over 1300 mm a year. Until some time ago, Urmila Mahato, a 42-year-old farmer from Pitidri had been struggling to ensure her family’s food security. Her family could barely sustain on the 18 quintals of paddy her small farm of two acres could produce in a year. Only one acre of her farm could be used for seasonal farming of vegetables due to lack of irrigation facilities.

A 1,320 MW power plant near mangrove forests of Sundarbans may have irreversible consequences.

The mangrove forests of the Sundarbans are the biggest barriers against cyclones from the Bay of Bengal, saving both India and Bangladesh from irreparable damage. A UNESCO world heritage site consisting of Ramsar bird conservation area and three wildlife sanctuaries, the Sundarbans will soon see a 1,320 MW thermal plant operating at Rampal, just 14 km away from its officially demarcated boundary in south Bangladesh. Environmentalists have raised an alarm about a possible impact of running a power plant near the eco-sensitive area.